RE: Being an Atheist in a Christian Dominated Country
Distrust for religion should not equate to disbelief in God. That is like deciding diamonds do not exist because you were sold fake ones a few times in a row.
Religion tells us that God is someone who demands praise. But surely a being capable of creating everything we see before us-- including ourselves, would not be so lacking in humility and grace that he, she or it would require their ego stroked in perpetuity.
I think you are right. Religion is most likely bullshit, and nothing more than systems used to control us. However, I feel that if you examine Atheism closely, you will likely find that it too fits all the necessary criteria to be regarded as a religion.
Don't give up on God entirely until you have searched in the right places and still come up short. Whatever those places may be, something tells me religion is not one of them.
Yes! I'm so happy to see atheism being regarded as a religion 3 times this week on steemit. Previously, I had only heard myself say this. Followed!
Many religious and spiritualist people say that as if it is some form of defense when they are demonstrated to believe unreasonable and/or unsubstantiated things. It's basically an ad homenim attack to help them feel as if the position contrary to theirs was as illogical as their own.
Do you have any good reason to claim that atheism is a religion anyway? (note my other comment where I explain why it's not)
I haven't heard it, I don't know many religious people, but I guess I can imagine it being used as a defense.
Agnosticism seems to me like a much more scientific approach to the nature of reality. Not being able to prove something doesn't prove the opposite to be true. I think agnosticism allows you to prefer to believe in no deities without ruling it out entirely.
Agnosticism and atheism are not actually on the same spectrum. Agnosticism is about knowledge while atheism is about belief. Being gnostic means that you claim to know where a deity exists. You can lack belief in a deity without claiming to know for certain.
Your positions on gnosticism and theism don't have to be aligned so you can be a gnostic theists, an agnostic theist, a gnostic atheist or an agnostic atheist.
That is obviously correct. But that doesn't really talk about the general atheist position. When you lack belief in a claim, this doesn't mean that you claim the opposite to be true. You just see no good reason to believe the claim.
Let me explain it from my personal point of view as it would be less confusing. I personally don't believe that there is any convincing evidence to believe that any god exists and thus I do identify myself as an atheist. But I don't claim that it is 100% certain that there is no god as you can't really prove a negative. The exact same logic applies to ferries and leprechauns. You could never prove that ferries and leprechauns don't exist with absolute certainty. The only thing you can do is examine the available evidence and conclude that none of it confirms the existence of ferries and leprechauns. But since we have a lot of data and none of it confirms or implies their existence, it's perfectly reasonable for somebody to not believe in ferries or leprechauns and saying that the logical position is really in the middle ground between believing and not believing is actually fallacious.
In the same way, we have gathered piles of evidence on how the universe works and what the universe is and since none of it proves the existence of god, it's perfectly reasonable to not believe the yet unsubstantiated claim that a god exists. Thus it's quite justified to call yourself an atheist in that case. And this is what I have chosen to do. I don't feel like adding the qualifier agnostic in front of the word atheist despite the fact that it certainly applies for two main reasons - on one hand, it offers very little additional clarity and on the other hand, many people unreasonably view it as the middle ground between theism and atheism and I don't want to fuel a misunderstanding of my position by adding it.
You might feel that way, but that's only because you haven't bothered to actually examine it.
Let me help you with that. Let's start with the definition:
Atheism - the lack of belief in a deity or deities
When somebody is an atheist, this doesn't tell you anything about the rest of their positions, beliefs or their morality. Atheism is not a set of values or even a world view - it's just a way to call the group of people that answer the question Do you believe in a deity or deities?" with No. How does that make that widely diverse group of people a religion? It's like saying that everybody that is not Christian is the same religion - non-Christian...
It doesn't. Disbelief in the existence of a deity or deities for most people stems from the lack of evidence for their existence. Diamonds are something real and demonstrable, not believing in god is like not believing in unicorns as nobody can demonstrate convincingly that they exists. It's the same with god. Until you can prove that a deity of sort exists, it's totally reasonable to not believe that it does.
This is awfully presumptuous of you. I don't know how you can feel that you know me well enough to make such a statement about my experience. I have most certainly examined Atheism very closely, which resulted in me no longer referring to myself as one.
It easy to cite a definition and then act as though that proves something, but it doesn't. An examination should demand one look further than the given definition of any particular word.
I don't have much time but I will try to share my reasoning for the claim as clearly as I can.
I am going to be talking in a general sense, referring to the average person who grows up and churned through a public education system.
As you grow up, you are presented with only two serious theories for where we came from. Creationism, or The Big Bang Theory and Evolution. Through the use of multiple choice questions and "red vs blue" paradigms rampant throughout society, your brain is conditioned to accept beliefs based on the rejection of opposing(and typically limited) choices.
So when one later rejects God and creationism, they subconsciously and automatically invest their belief in the only other viable option that had been presented to them throughout their lifetime- The Big Bang Theory. This results in the lack of the necessity to examine their new belief in the Big Bang Theory with the same level off scrutiny and scepticism.
This is dangerous, because one then invests their faith in the claims of mainstream science by-proxy. This is why almost every, if not every Atheist you meet believes in the big bang theory and evolution as the cause for our existence. Typically, they also dogmatically believe any and all information presented to them under the guise of "scientific research" and thus, they are placing their faith in something they cannot prove for themselves, just like followers of religion.
If you truly spend some time studying evolutionary theory and the big bang theory, and if you do so from an unbiased and open-minded perspective, I believe you will come to the realisation that the claims are just as fanciful as that of most religions.
I suspect you will argue that this is not the journey of all Atheists, and you would be correct. But, it is certainly the journey for a lot of them, myself included. And it is only because of how closely I did examine Atheism and what led me to adopt it as a philosophy, that I was able to put all this together and then come to my own decision for once.
I think you are perhaps just being combative. The analogy was a good one and I see no reason to have to explain it. Also, you could not demonstrate that diamonds, as they are described to us, exist. They are precious because they take however many centuries or millennia to be created.. Can you prove this? No, you can find a scientist to prove it for you with words that they learned from another scientist. That's not proof, unless you have faith in the source of the information. To be clear, I don't believe that diamonds are not a real thing, but my point is that I believe I'd be an idiot to believe 100% that they are what they are reported to be without seeing the transformation from rock to precious stone take place before my very eyes.
Thanks for the lengthy comment. I love long comments coz that simply means people took the time to read my article. :-)
The dogma that most people follow is a total bull. We let the system control us coz it's the best practice most people know. They are scared to get out of their comfort zone and be different. So they go with the flow and associate themselves with religion so people will regard them as their brothers/sisters.
Thanks so much man for your comment, I really appreciate it. Followed you. :)